No.221776 (Ch), Able Seaman, Percy HARDING
Aged 28
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Born on 28th August 1886 (4th qtr Bury St.Edmunds 4a:689) son of and Mary (née COOPER)
1891 census...Aged 4, he was at 9 St.John's Place, Bury St.Edmunds with his father Robert HARDING [39] house painter; his mother Maey E [41]; brothers Robert C[12], Walter J [9], Ernest [7] and Lofus [2]. All were born in Bury St.Edmunds. 1901 census...Aged 15, he was still at 9 St. John's Place with his parents, brother Ernest (house carpenter) and Loftus. 1911 census...Aged 24, he was on the battleship HMS Dominion, 2nd Dvision, Home Fleet, Glengariff Harbour, Ireland. His parents nd brothers Robert and Ernest were till at 9 St John's Place. |
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He enlisted in the Royal Navy on 28th August 1902 for 12 years, aged 16. He was 5 feet 2inches tall, brown hair and eyes. A Bury St.Edmunds born warehouseman. Starting as a boy at HMS Ganges, he added 1.5 inches to his height by the time he was 18 years old.. He was posted to HMS Hawke on 4th February 1914. Hawke was an "Edgar" Class cruiser of 7,350 tons, capableof 20 knots, with two 9.2 inch guns and ten 6 inch guns, built at Chatman, she was completed on 16th May 1893. When war broke out she, with the other Edgar class cruisers, formed the 10th Cruiser Squadron blockading the seas between the Shetlands and Norway. October 1914, the 10th Cruiser Squadron was deployed further south in the North Sea as part of efforts to stop German warships from attacking a troop convoy from Canada. On 15 October, the squadron was on patrol off Aberdeen, deployed in line abreast at intervals of about 10 miles. Hawke (Captain, Hugh P. E. T. Williams) stopped at 9:30 am to pick up mail from sister ship Endymion. After recovering her boat with the mail, Hawke proceeded at 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph) without zig-zagging to regain her station, and was out of sight of the rest of the Squadron when at 10:30 a single torpedo from the German submarine U-9 (which had sunk three British cruisers on 22 September), struck Hawke, which quickly capsized. The remainder of the squadron only realised anything was amiss, when, after a further, unsuccessful attack on Theseus, the squadron was ordered to retreat at high speed to the northwest, and no response to the order was received from Hawke. The destroyer Swift was dispatched from Scapa Flow to search for Hawke and found a raft carrying one officer and twenty-one men, while a boat with a further forty-nine survivors was rescued by a Norwegian steamer. 524 officers and men died, with only 70 survivors (one man died of his wounds on 16 October). Percy has 2 lines in De Ruvigny's Roll of Honour HARDING, PERCY, A.B., 221776, H.M.S.Hawkes; lost when that ship was torpedoed in the North Sea, 15 Oct.1914.
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